


Such Great Heights

by cheloniidae



Series: rise in perfect light [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 20:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11722068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheloniidae/pseuds/cheloniidae
Summary: Arcade wouldn’t call stargazing worth risking life and limb over, but Liam Zhou’s priorities are an enigma to him.(Or: Arcade looks to the Courier, and the Courier looks to the stars.)





	Such Great Heights

Most people, after reuniting a Super Mutant dictator with her long-lost robot friend and freeing a geriatric mechanic from the daily threat of execution, would call it a day. Most people would take a chance to rest, perhaps while basking in the glow of their hard-earned heroism. Most people would listen to their doctor and _not_ climb on top of a roof in the middle of the night with their arm in a sling.

Unfortunately for Arcade’s blood pressure, Liam Zhou is not most people.

Arcade finds him on the roof of one of the taller buildings, sitting with his knees pulled close to his chest, ED-E floating at his shoulder like a loyal dog and not a piece of technology from a fascist paramilitary organization that could get them killed if anyone recognizes it. Liam is holding a pair of binoculars up to his eyes with his unbroken arm, his face turned up towards the night sky. Here in Black Mountain, in the high thin air, far from the bright glow of Vegas, the moonless sky shimmers with light. Stars are scattered across the dark like paint flicked across a canvas; the Milky Way cuts across it all like a brush stroke.

Arcade wouldn’t call it worth risking life and limb over, but Liam’s priorities are an enigma.

“Invading Utobitha wasn’t enough danger for one day?” he calls up. Hopefully not loud enough to wake any sleeping mutants. There’s an old adage against doing just that, and he’s tried to live his life by it.

Liam stands suddenly, fumbles with the binoculars enough to jostle his sling, and says a sharp Chinese word that Arcade doesn’t know the meaning of but is certain would’ve made Daisy box him around the ears. He turns to ED-E next-- Arcade can’t hear what Liam says, but he’d bet Freeside that it’s an apology for swearing in front of the young robot. He made Cass do the same just last week.

With the binoculars looped safely around his neck, Liam leans over the roof’s edge to peer down at Arcade. “It isn’t dangerous. I just had to climb there,” and he points to a ladder leading up the side of the nearest building, “then jump over here.”

“With a broken arm. Some experts might call that the definition of dangerous. Some doctors, even.”

“And those sad, sad doctors wouldn’t get to see Saturn.”

“Yes, the incredible difference thirty feet makes when something is hundreds of thousands of miles away.”

“Twelve billion kilometers. And the houses are blocking it from down there.” He beckons to Arcade to join him. “Come on, you have to see this! It’s incredible. I’ve never seen the rings this clear before.”

His face is obscured by the darkness, but Arcade has seen that earnest, eager smile enough times to have it memorized. The face that launched a thousand questionable decisions: exploring Vaults infested with animate, homicidal plant life; breaking into REPCONN’s headquarters and impersonating employees; following a deranged radio broadcast to the rescue of one Raul Tejada. It always starts with that grin, and it usually ends with someone needing medical attention.

Today, that someone was Liam-- shot in the arm by a Super Mutant, with a fractured humerus to show for it. ( _I think my jokes are funny_ , Liam had objected when Arcade diagnosed it, and Arcade had deadpanned, _It’s worse than I thought_ , and Raul had groaned with the realization that he was now stuck with the pair of them.) But there Liam is on the roof, broken arm and all, and here Arcade is, climbing up to him. On the scale of poorly advised decisions Arcade has made in the past several months, this has to be a solid three.

When he makes the small leap from the adjacent building’s roof, Liam is waiting, ready to steady him and offer a smug grin. “See? Not dangerous.”

(ED-E chirps in agreement. It always takes Liam’s side.)

They sit side by side on the center of the roof. Liam unloops the strap of his binoculars from around his neck, careful not to hit the sling, and offers them to Arcade the way someone else might hold out a baby. They’re lighter than Arcade expects them to be. “You can adjust them,” says Liam. “You shouldn’t need your glasses.”

Arcade sets his glasses down by his side (carefully; it’s hard to find replacements out here and he still hasn’t found the pair he lost inside the Lucky 38) and fiddles with the binoculars’ knobs until the world comes into stunningly sharp focus. Arcade can count the cracks in the paint on the houses below them, the small shrubs struggling to grow out of the dry ground, even the impressions in the earth left by Super Mutants’ heavy footsteps. He suddenly understands why Liam treats these things as carefully as he does-- these aren’t just binoculars, but a portable telescope. It can’t be easy to find ones like them.

Liam covers Arcade’s hand with his own, warm and rough with calluses, and raises it to point at the sky. “Saturn’s over there,” he says. “See that line of three stars? Follow that angle down and to the right. It’s the bright yellow one.”

“I see it.” The planet is a beautiful gold, surrounded by a pale, flat ring. A steady point of light against the infinite dark. It looks so small -- fragile, even -- though it could fit hundreds of Earths inside it. “You were right,” Arcade says. “It _is_ incredible.”

Liam keeps going. Guides Arcade to point at bright Sirius; orange Betelgeuse; the distant nebula forming the center of Orion’s sword; shining red Mars. The planet is at its farthest from the Earth tonight, according to Liam. If Arcade were inclined to believe in omens, he might call that a good one.

When Arcade finally lowers the binoculars from his eyes, Liam settles against his side. He’s one of the few men Arcade has ever met who’s taller than him; he rests his head against Arcade’s, and Arcade can just barely feel the impression of mottled bullet scars. “I haven’t seen stars like this in years,” he says. “They can’t compete with the streetlights in Xijing. Everything gets washed out. You can see the city from across the bay at night, but when you’re inside… nothing.”

Arcade has never visited the Shi capital in what used to be San Francisco, but from Liam’s descriptions of it, it must be a sight. “Sounds like Vegas.”

“If Vegas had reasonable temperatures and endless wind. But they’re halfway there; they already have an emperor hidden away in a palace.”

At the mention of House, the mood sours. Arcade can’t understand why Liam is working for him. Why a former Follower of the Apocalypse — someone who happily fixed the water pump in Freeside, who distributed Helios One’s power evenly across the Mojave, who let Tom Anderson get away with siphoning water to the needy in Westside — would work for a ruthless authoritarian like House. It doesn’t make sense. And every time Arcade tries to ask, he dodges the question.

Liam perks up, suddenly, pointing at a star. Or something that _would_ be star, if it wasn’t moving swiftly across the sky. “That’s Ofek 25.”

“Horizon.”

Liam lifts his head from Arcade’s shoulder, leaving a cold spot behind. “Do you see something? I thought all the mutants—”

“No, no,” Arcade says quickly. “The name means ‘horizon.’”

“Huh. I never knew that.” Liam leans back against Arcade, a heavy, welcome warmth. “Make a wish, before Ofek disappears behind the ofek.”

“Wishing on shooting stars is more traditional.”

“A meteor burning up in atmospheric friction isn’t magic. Thousands of people coming together to build a machine, launch it into orbit, and keep it there for two hundred years… I’ve always thought that has to be the closest thing.” Liam says it with such sincerity that, for a moment, Arcade forgets how ridiculous it would sound in anyone else’s mouth. He tilts his head to track the satellite’s journey, the stubble on his cheek brushing against Arcade’s skin. And if Arcade shivers, well-- it’s a cold night. He has a defense.

“I used to dream about people exploring there again,” Liam continues as the satellite falls behind the horizon. That’s the trick to orbit: always falling and never striking the ground. “I still do, sometimes.”

“ _Non est ad astra mollis e terris via_.”

“Something to the stars something. What’s the rest?”

“‘There is no easy path from Earth to the stars.’”

Liam laughs at that, quietly, some joke Arcade can’t see. “No. There isn’t, is there? But,” and he rubs the back of Arcade’s hand with his thumb, “I think I like it here on Earth.” And the Earth might be war-torn and bleeding, in constant need of healers who will never finish the work of healing it, but right now--

Right now, on this roof, Arcade agrees.


End file.
